The Papaya Summer of '67

Margaret wiped her hands on her apron, the scent of ripening papaya filling the small kitchen. At eighty-two, she still kept the fruit bowl her husband Thomas had built forty years ago. The papaya, a gift from her grandson who'd traveled to Hawaii, sat among the apples and oranges—a splash of tropical yellow in her Michigan home.

Outside the window, snow fell softly on the garden where Barnaby, her golden retriever, lay buried beside his old friend Whiskers the cat. They'd passed within months of each other three years ago, leaving Margaret alone in the house where she'd raised three children.

"They had a good run," she whispered, remembering how the dog and cat had curled together by the fireplace, ancient arthritic companions who'd forgotten they were supposed to be enemies. That's what age did, she thought—made you forget what wasn't important.

The papaya reminded her of 1967, the summer she and Thomas had camped in the Upper Peninsula. They'd seen a red fox that year, sleek and fearless, watching them from across the creek. Thomas had whistled to it, and to their astonishment, the fox had approached, taking pieces of bread from his hand.

"Some things trust easily," Thomas had said. "Others need time."

That fox had visited their campsite every dawn for a week. Margaret had sketched it in her journal, drawings she still kept in the bedside table. She'd been an artist then, before life and children and practicality had pushed her paints into the closet.

Now, looking at the papaya's sunset-orange flesh, she made a decision. She opened the closet where her easel gathered dust. Her arthritis made her fingers stiff, but she could still hold a brush.

The painting took three days. A fox by a creek, papaya-colored sunlight through pine trees, a dog and cat curled together in the foreground. When her granddaughter Lily visited, she found Margaret crying quietly.

"Grandma? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, darling," Margaret smiled, pressing the painting into the girl's hands. "I just remembered something I'd forgotten. It's never too late to become who you were meant to be."

That spring, Lily enrolled in art school. And every morning, Margaret ate her papaya with a pencil in hand, sketching the fox that still visited her dreams, wild and willing to trust.